Kings and Queens
by alternativeninja
Summary: Kayla is unemotional, violent, vindictive and contemptuous. She feels nothing but hatred for her own species and often wonders why she was ever put on God's Green Earth, but being kidnapped by Satan himself and discovering a strange connection with him tends to change one's outlook. Rated M for swearing, graphic violence, all the good stuff.
1. Chapter 1

Halloween. It's the busiest night of the year in this little piece of crap ghost town and the hilariously titled 666 Diner is packed as waitress Kayla Smith navigates her way around her section of busy decorated tables and old drunks and hyperactive students. If the sheer volume of people wasn't bad enough, her boss has made all the girls on duty wear these _horrific_ bunny ears "for a bit of fun", and they clash horribly with the horns and tail logo of the dinner (Satanic bunnies, anyone?) and ugh, she would so quit this crap job if it didn't mean she'd only have four bucks to her name. Instead she has to deal with cat calls and wolf whistles as she collects plates, delivers food, serves drinks. As if they need more alcohol.

It all comes to a head when she bends over a booth to grab some empty glasses, and some _asshole_ is behind her, groping her butt. "You wanna take this outside baby?" some foul, alcohol-heavy voice is growling in her ear, and for a second her mind flicks to the switchblade hidden in her apron pocket, but she dismisses the thought. Too many witnesses.

No one around takes any notice of the encounter.

She sighs, sharply elbows the drunk in the abdomen and accidentally-on-purpose stumbles back to stand on his toes. Hard. His grip loosens and she wiggles free. She spins around to face him. He's dressed like Frankenstein's monster, if Frankenstein's monster is old enough to be her father. "I'm on duty dude, but you know what? I think that guy in booth two is giving you the eye. Knock yourselves out." She smiles sweetly, ignoring the jeers from the guy's table, and takes the glasses behind the diner counter where she can observe the dining area clearly. She was right, that guy had been staring at them, but now that she's moved he is definitely staring at _her_. Weird. At least he isn't in some kind of ridiculous costume.

_Like her, _she thinks, taking off her stupid bunny ears. She reflects on how unbothered she is by the pervy encounter. See, she's not like other girls, she's different, special, whatever flowery piece of crap way you want to put it.

Fucking insane was the term her parents lovingly chose. Dangerously sociopathic, the psychiatrists said. Highly disturbed, her teachers labelled. She'd have been pissed off but she just hadn't been able to find it in herself to care.

She doesn't _feel_ you see, not in the regular people sense. She's comfortably numb in all given situations, unless you count the writhing rage coiled at the pit at her stomach that's pretty much omnipresent. She can keep it under wraps if she wants, but most of the time she _doesn't_ want and God forbid anyone standing in her way then.

She doesn't know why she's angry, wrathful, vengeful even. It's just _there_, and she's never felt right about questioning it, even when countless therapists tried to on her behalf. It's simply just a part of her, and she doesn't mind. She kind of likes it, actually. It makes her strong.

She remembers one night, a few months before she turned 18, after her parents were trying to force some new fucking kind of magical medication down her throat. _We're just trying to make you better_, her mom had cooed. Kayla had snapped at that, punched her straight in the face and broken her nose. _Maybe I don't want to be fucking better, _she'd screamed, blood on her knuckles. _Maybe I want to be crazy._

Her father, stern and unmoved as ever, had given her a cold ultimatum: stay and conform, or leave and cut all ties.

Her elder sister, home from college for the weekend, had crept into her room late that night. Alice had been her only friend, the only person she had a bond with, the only person she'd tolerated. Alice had been the only one who had stood by her for years, and yet here she was, whispering _Kayla you can't do this anymore, they're only trying to help, can't you get better for them, can't you see what you're putting them through. Stop Kayla, just stop._

But she didn't want to, didn't care. With Alice turning on her, she had nothing to lose.

She'd left early the next morning, packed the essentials into a bag and hitchhiked her way across states, picked up whatever jobs here and there she could blag without any qualifications to her name. She'd been in this one town for eight months, the longest she'd ever stayed in one place. It wasn't that she liked it, she just didn't hate it. It was quiet. Some said it was haunted, and that meant much less people.

Except on fucking Halloween.

She blinks back to the present, in this crowded crappy diner. "You okay, hun?" one of the new girls asks, all sweetness and smiles. Kayla glares, and she shrinks back, smile disappears, goes back to serving tables. Clearly she hadn't got the memo. Kayla Smith doesn't talk to anyone. Kayla Smith does not have friends. Kayla Smith only has targets, and it's best to stay out her way or risk becoming one.

Alone again, she grins. Life's good here.

She takes one look at the crowded tables and the rowdy customers and decides she needs a break so she grabs her hoodie from the peg by the back entrance and takes out the trash, hoping for a few minutes alone in the cool night air. She breathes easier in the night, in the cold. She groans when she sees the state of the parking lot out back; one of the other girls must've thought it would be extremely fucking intelligent to leave the trash bags at the side of the dumpster where the raccoons could get at 'em. She begins to clean up the mess, thinking all the while that she definitely doesn't get paid enough for this shit.

It's pretty chilly she thinks, as she pulls her hoodie tighter around her. A noise behind her gets her attention. She pauses and listens. Heavy, staggering, drunken-sounding footsteps. Ugh, _this guy_ again. She's not scared, she's _pissed_. Guy can't take a hint, fine. She'll need to make sure he gets the message. She waits until the footfalls are loud and close and then whirls up and around, kicks his shin, grabs him by the neck. She pushes him against the wall, blade of her knife already at his throat. Only then does she stop to take in his appearance.

It's not the extremely intoxicated Frankenstein's monster.

It's the staring guy from booth two. He's kinda cute, actually, now that she's up close. Y'know, with a blade at his jugular.

He doesn't appear phased in the slightest. She gets the feeling she's only holding him against the wall because he's letting her. There's a look in his eyes like he wouldn't think twice about snapping her arm like a twig. She knows because it's the same look she sees in her own eyes, every time she sees her reflection in the mirror.

She releases him, steps back, but keeps the knife. Little paranoia never hurt nobody. "Back door's staff only. The fuck are you doing following me out here?" she spits.

He raises an eyebrow. Smirks. "You fight?" he enquires, ignoring her question. _ Asshole_. She does not have time for this, for an arrogant stranger with dark hair and a leather jacket.

"You've seen nothing yet. Why don't you run along?" She relaxes slightly, keeps her eyes focused on him. He doesn't budge. "I've got work to do."

"Work?" He chuckles, low and dark. "Oh sweetheart, work is most definitely the least of your worries." She rolls her eyes, because the last person who called her 'sweetheart' got a dislocated jaw, but she doesn't walk away. Don't turn your back and all that. What an asshole.

But as she's looking at him, the pupils of his eyes seem to seep out into his iris, and in a blink his entire eyes are black. Something in the back of her mind snaps, and almost without meaning to, she lunges forward and slips the knife between his ribs under his jacket. Kayla twists the blade as far as her wrist will allow her in one movement before letting it go.

No effect. The asshole fucking _grins_ as he pulls the bloodied knife out his chest and lets it drop with a clang to the tarmac.

She has a split second to think _oh shit_ before something heavy hits the side of her head and her world turns black.

She comes to in a dimly lit room. She scopes out the setting. Bare walls. Tiny basement window covered in a glimmer of frost. Ceiling fan ominously whirring above her. It's cold, so cold her breath is misting in front of her, and yet somehow that calms her. She remembers the black eyes first. She's been taken by something not entirely human; alright then.

She's had worse days.

Kayla scans over herself quickly. She's sitting upright, on a stiff wooden chair, hands bound together behind her by a shit poor excuse for a rope. There's nothing broken or seriously injured, but she feels something warm and wet drip down her temple. Blood. From the knockout hit. She sighs for what seems like the hundredth time that night. She is _so_ done. Her fingers play along the frayed sleeve of her hoodie, finds the hidden blade stashed in there. She firmly believes you can never be too paranoid, and hey, it's paid off.

She notes the dried blood staining the ground around her feet. Not hers. This just gets better and better. There's a dripping noise, and as she turns to look she sees a trolley of sorts containing a whole arsenal of weapons. Painful looking instruments. Blood is rolling off them in fat, wet drops.

She closes her eyes, resigns herself to whatever painful hell she's gotten herself into now. Positions the freed blade in her fingers. Opens her eyes again.

She looks up and sees the silhouette of a man standing under the window. He's leaning back, arms folded, one foot against the wall. Her eyes adjust to the dimness. Blond hair. Not the same guy with the creepy ass eyes.

Man, is she popular with the dudes tonight.

"You're awake. Excellent," he notes with a smile, but his eyes are cold. Icy blue. "Nice apron," he smirks, gesturing to the 666 Diner logo scrawled across it. She feels like she's missing the punch line. "Hope you don't mind the ropes sweetheart. But just to clarify, they're for your benefit only. So you understand this is a hostage situation. Ropes or no ropes, you're not going anywhere kiddo, believe me."

She rolls her eyes at him - because ugh, sweetheart _again_, really? - and smirks because she's already sawed halfway through the rope. "Man, if you wanted a date, you only had to ask," she grins. "Sending your little buddy instead? Sweet I guess, if you're 12. Kinda makes your game seem a bit weak, don't it?" The rope falls apart in her hand, she holds on to it. Blondie moves off the wall to stand up straight.

"Aww c'mon, now you've hurt my feelings," he mocks, walking towards her, stopping when they are toe to toe. "No need to be snide, _Kayla," _he sneers as he eyes her name badge on her uniform. "Can't blame a guy for wanting to go to a bit of effort."

She drops the rope and stands in one swift movement to glare into those strange eyes. She's quite a bit shorter than him, so they're more nose to chin than nose to nose, but whatever. She assumes the effect is the same. "Yeah. Very romantic. So I was wondering if we could skip the foreplay and get straight down to business –"

Knowing her attempts are most likely futile, she stabs him in the neck with the tiny blade, aiming for the main artery. She doesn't hang around to see if it works or not, instead spinning around to run for the door at the back of the room.

She gets exactly 3 strides away before he fucking _appears_ _out of thin air_ right in front of her. "Ow," he remarks sarcastically as he removes the blade and pockets it, but she sees a flicker of surprise in his eyes. "And here I thought we were playing nice."

She glares, pure fire in her eyes, and that perfectly coiled spring of rage is most definitely _uncoiling _now. "What are you?" she hisses with pure venom in her voice.

"Well, that kinda depends on what _you_ are, kiddo."

She doesn't even attempt to comprehend his cryptic words, choosing instead to stare him out with a defiant tilt of her chin.

"Interesting," he smirks. His breath is cool on her face. "Very interesting."

They stay like that for what seems like an age, parted by a few millimetres of air, staring, glaring, searching; just trying to get a read on each other. She's trying to work out why she's here, why she isn't dead yet, why nothing horrifically painful and bloody has happened to her so far. He's scanning her as though he's looking for something he doesn't quite believe exists. Like a kid on Christmas desperately wanting his last present to be that toy he's wanted all year, but trying not to get his hopes up to avoid crushing disappointment. She doesn't like it. She's still attempting to figure out what the fuck this guy is. 'Not human' is a bit too vague for her liking. Plus, his face is _messed up_. Sores have split their way across his cheeks, weeping, bloody. Skin is peeling off in thick layers around his temples and on the side of his neck. There are pitch black circles around his eyes like he hasn't slept for a year.

Now Kayla's aware that she's not going anywhere, but she's kind of starting to feel like maybe she doesn't want to, and that's a weird feeling to have. There's a sick curiosity plaguing her and she feels a sudden need to know why she's here. There's a reason she's been taken, a reason she hasn't been hurt. Yet.

She wonders exactly what kind of crap she's waded into now.

Eventually, he moves first. He leans his face in towards hers – personal space be damned, apparently - and frosty eyes pierce her soul. "You're not scared," he murmurs, equal parts wonder and disgust.

Kayla laughs, sharply and too loud in the cold stillness of the cellar. "What's there to be afraid of? I'm only in a dungeon with a strange man and some questionable looking instruments. This is just a regular Friday night for me, buddy." He's right; she's not scared. She's not been scared for a long time.

It's difficult to be scared when you have nothing to lose.

He frowns, like her answer is the exact opposite of what he expected, and then suddenly reaches out and grabs the side of her face, hard. His fingers are freezing cold as they pinch into her flesh and she bites down on the inside of her bottom lip as she boldly scowls back at him.

Her cheek tingles and all of a sudden it feels like its burning red hot under his fingertips, and he looks confused, but with the angry air of someone who is _never_ confused and somehow that confuses him even more. She doesn't understand until she moves her gaze away from his eyes.

Before her eyes, his face is healing. Those otherworldly sores are simply sealing themselves back up with a faint glow as a strange red light burns in his pupils. The black circles around his eyes lighten. He wrenches his hand away from her, gasping. He stumbles backwards and feels his freshly healed skin; looks down at his hands like he's never really seen them before.

Kayla raises a shaking hand to her temple; her fingers come away wet and bloody. She's still bleeding. _Well that doesn't seem fair_, she thinks inanely, desperately pushing away all thoughts about what just happened.

He raises his eyes back to her, where she stands stock still, astonished for the first time since, well, ever. He staring at her with amazement in his eyes, but he looks lost, haunted. The room feels eerily still.

Finally he breaks the silence by stuttering out, "Oh this fucking great. Bet he's fucking pleased with himself. Hilarious, Dad. Really fucking funny." He's half muttering and now his face is distorted in disgust and she gets the impression he's talking more to himself than her. "Human. _Fucking human. _Should've known."

"Um," Kayla says, feeling completely unnerved for the first time. "So I usually try to at least get a guy's name before we hit second base, y'know?"

He's still breathing heavily as he looks at her. "Lucifer," he says, eyes still wide with awe regardless of the twist of repulsion on his features. "My name is Lucifer."


	2. Chapter 2

Kayla stares back for a full three minutes and twenty-seven seconds before erupting into laughter, bending over double and clutching her sides. She can't help it.

Lucifer frowns. "Well, I've never had that reaction before," he mutters, looking away from her.

Kayla tries to get a hold of herself, straightening up and wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says, breathless, "but are you telling me I've been kidnapped by _fucking Satan_?" And just like that she's off again, giggling madly in spite of herself. The situation is just too fucked up.

Lucifer pins his eyes back to hers sharply. "Don't call me that," he says, voice clear and cold. The iciness in his tone sobers her and she stands still, silent, unable to move. _Don't piss off the Devil, _she mentally scolds herself, inwardly still thinking this whole thing is too absurd to be anything but hilarious.

Lucifer ponders. "Let me try something. Meg!" he calls, his voice suddenly shockingly loud, and a woman with crazy brown hair in a leather jacket strides through the door at the back of the room. Lucifer turns to face her, his back to Kayla. _Wonder why it's always leather jackets, _Kayla wonders inanely.

"Father?" she drawls with a smirk as her eyes turn black. "What's the problem? Princess won't talk? Give me ten minutes and I bet –"

"Meg," Lucifer says and there's a dangerous edge in his voice. Meg falls silent and her eyes return to normal. She peers around him, trying to get a good look at Kayla.

"She's not restrained?" she says, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. She looks Kayla up and down, apparently confused that Kayla is unharmed.

Lucifer chuckles under his breath, as he glances over his shoulder at Kayla. "No, I think we've established that's not necessary." He slides his gaze back to Meg. "Where are your brothers?"

"Outside. Awaiting orders, sir."

"Good. Fetch them for me." Meg nods once and turns on her heel, swiftly exiting the room.

Kayla's not really sure what's going on now or whether she's going to remain unhurt, but she's curious, so she figures she might as well ask. "Father?" she enquires.

He turns to her, frowning once more. "Demons," he says, his face hardening. "My creations."

They're silent for a moment, until the door opens again and two men stroll in. They have the same lazy smiles and matching cocksure attitudes. Kayla recognises one, the asshole who knocked her out behind the diner. She scowls and her temple throbs with memory.

He's the one who speaks first. "You wanted to see us, Father?" He sounds so fucking pleased with himself, Kayla notes. Maybe a private audience with Daddy was something to be awed at.

Lucifer remains facing Kayla, his back to them. He eyes the blood on Kayla's temple and frowns. "_See _is perhaps a nicety." His voice has that cold, dangerous edge to it again, and Kayla sees the two men exchange glances before an odd orange light burns inside their skulls.

They slump to the floor, dead.

Lucifer turns to look at them, pleased. "Full power," he remarks. "That _is _new."

He calls Meg in to "clean up" and though her eyes are wide, she says nothing as she drags the bodies outside. He tells her to take the rest of the night off. Lucifer waits until she leaves before turning back to Kayla. "They weren't supposed to hurt you," he remarks matter-of-factly, glancing at her wound again.

She's sitting on the floor – her feet had been starting to go numb throughout the whole demon kill charade – legs crossed, staring at her feet. "I wasn't exactly going to come quietly. I stabbed one in the heart."

Lucifer grins at that, laughing slightly and she looks up at him, unmoved. "They're like your children."

Lucifer apprehends her for a moment, before sitting down facing her, mirroring her position. "No. They're abominations."

"Like humans?"

"Yes," he replies, gaze unflinching.

"But they look at you like a father? Knowing you despise them?"

Lucifer sighs. "I… made them. Their existence is my doing. They love me for that. But they're nothing but twisted human souls, soldiers for my army; they don't know that. I was trying to prove a point to my Father, to show him how wrong he was about humans, his perfect little _creations_." He spits the word with barely-contained rage. "I wanted to show them how flawed they are. So I twisted a soul until no good traits remained, only the murderous, evil, contemptuous ones." He pauses, contemplating. "In the end, all I did was amplify everything I hate about humans. And I got an eternity of isolation in hell for my trouble. So not worth it," he adds satirically, with a grimace.

Kayla stares at her feet. She wonders, not for the first time, if she's dreaming. She's in a basement in the middle of God-knows-where, wearing a uniform with 666 and devil horns all over it, with the fucking Devil himself, except he just seems kinda sad and not really all that scary. If you forget about the fact that he essentially just murdered two of his children in cold-blood, of course.

Lucifer's looking at her again, that look of interest mixed with hardly-hidden disgust. She wonders, again, why she's here, what he could possibly want. If he wanted to kill her she'd be dead already. Suddenly she doesn't feel like sticking around to find out exactly what kind of horror planned for her.

"I want to go home." Anger is starting to build in her again as she lifts her eyes back to him. He looks at her for a moment before answering.

"You don't have a home. You have a place you go when you're not at a job you can't stand. You don't even sleep; not much anyway. You don't have friends. In fact, you can't stand people. You're ashamed to be a part of a species so filled with plain _stupidity_. You certainly don't have family. They disowned you. Shitty dad made you leave for being different and you've got a whole cornucopia of daddy issues to show for it. You've got an older brother maybe, no, a sister, who was _everything_. You idolised her, but she turned on you, sided with Daddy dearest, and you left. You're alone. You don't have a home."

Kayla scowls – thoroughly pissed now, 'cause how come he gets to know all this shit about her when she knows fuck all about why she's even here - and averts her gaze. He snorts. "Lucky guess."

She doesn't question it, just clenches her jaw and goes back to staring at her feet. Neither of them say anything for a long time; her brooding, him thoughtful.

"Lucifer," she breaks the silence again, and he fixes such an intense stare on her when she says his name that it's almost too much to look him in the eyes, but she does anyway. "Why am I still alive?" Unconsciously she reaches up to the side of her head where blood is beginning to dry and clot in her hair.

He frowns, first at her question, and then more deeply at her movement. "Let me see." He reaches over towards her face and she flinches away before closing her eyes and forcing herself to relax. Cold fingers like ice press against her wound, and then there's a burning sensation like earlier, but much more intense. The heat coils through her skull and spreads down into her chest and she can _feel_ that he's not intending to hurt her, before it touches the raw anger in her abdomen, the rage that's been building up more and more ever since she can remember. The heat snakes around it and for a crazy moment she feels soothed, calm, but against every instinct she jerks away from his touch because _what the fuck_. The heat dissipates and her rage, although quelled slightly, rests heavy in the pit of her stomach once more. It's nicely familiar. She opens her eyes and feels her temple, and there's nothing. No blood, no wound. She can't pull her gaze away from his.

"I… I haven't been able to heal others in a _very _long time," he admits, sounding awed. She waits for an answer to her question, and he sighs. "You're still alive because you're not human."

"Not human." He nods, and she knows she should feel confused, more angry, berated, but honestly all she feels is _relief_, like it's something she's always known but has never had confirmed. "Then what am I?"

"Are you familiar with my story?" he asks, and she shakes her head, because everything she's seen so far kind of goes against the stereotypical big bad King of Hell stories.

He looks disappointed, but he's patient with her. He tells her about God, about Michael, about the creation of humans and how he simply refused to kneel to them, about his fall, about Lilith, and finally he tells her about Hell. "When Michael put me in the cage, Daddy himself came for a surprise visit. He took my grace, well, some of it. A final punishment, He said. I'd laughed in His face, because the part of my grace He took was pathetic. Some of it was the power I could extort to destroy His precious pets, but most of it was my healing grace. He said I could have it back when I "grew up", to use His rather poetic term. I scoffed and called him a sad old man who was losing His touch, because I could easily wipe out the human race with what grace I had left."

He smiles wryly. "But, of course, He was right, like always. I couldn't even hope to use my full power without my vessel combusting – you saw the condition it was in earlier. I'd need my true vessel, and even then, I'd need galleons of demon blood for it to even hope for it to contain me. Turns out healing grace is kinda important." He laughs without humour. "I can heal my vessel's physical wounds, but not the ones caused by my own grace. Healing others is a big no-no."

"You need a vessel? Like possession?" She knows it's stupid of her, but she'd kind of assumed that angels looked human and that was that.

Lucifer nods. "With consent. Our true forms are a bit much for humans, you could say. My true form would melt your eyes," he adds in response to Kayla's quizzical look.

"That guy gave _the Devil _consent to ride around in him? Must've been a messed up dude."

He grimaces. "No, he'd just experienced the true nature of his pathetic species. He was vengeful, angry, full of hate for his own kind. He didn't need much convincing."

"I'm angry," Kayla mutters quietly. "Vengeful. All that stuff."

"I know. I could feel it when I healed you. It was rather impressive, in fact." He smiles knowingly.

Kayla grins back in spite of herself, because in all her years she's never met anyone who thought her incredible capacity to hate was _impressive._ It makes a nice change. "So, the guy – is he like a backseat driver in there, or – ?"

Lucifer shakes his head. "No. He's gone. Dead."

"Oh. How?"

His face twists into an ugly scowl. "A Winchester shot him in the face."

"Winchester?"

"A slight pest control problem. Meg's taking care of it."

Kayla takes a few minutes to mull over everything he's said. Lucifer looks at her seriously. "Kayla, you're my _lonsa_. My power. A physical manifestation of my lost grace. I can't just take it out of you; it _is you_, the very fibre of your being."

"So you need me to stay with you?" Kayla muses at the implications of road tripping with Satan himself. A lot of death, she assumes. Destruction. Devastation.

She doesn't care. Really doesn't. In fact, she feels a kind of sick excitement.

Lucifer nods, although he looks torn by her choice of words, like he doesn't want to need anything from anyone and he's certainly not used to it. "If you're with me, I don't need my true vessel. You can heal this one _and _I can access my full power. Of course, the fact that you're in human form would be my Father's last insult." He can't stop another flicker of disgust crossing his features.

Kayla starts laughing again.

Lucifer scowls at her and she struggles to control herself. "No, it's not – it's not that, it's just – I had a high school teacher who used to call me 'spawn of the Devil' at least three times a week in class, and now I find out she was right all along." She grins, and he gives her a slight smile in return. "But how is that even possible?"

Lucifer shrugs. "Dad made Eve out of Adam's rib; it was probably simple to make you out of a bit of angel mojo. Timed it nice too, so you'd be all grown up for me getting out the cage." He scowls at the floor at the mention of the cage again, and hell, she empathises with the guy, which is strange because she's never empathised with anyone before. But she knows how it feels to be different, how it feels to be betrayed. She knows how it is to be solely fuelled by anger. She breathes deeply before reaching for his hand.

When her fingers link through his frozen ones he flinches visibly, surprised at the touch. "Are all angels cold?" she asks, curious.

"No," he answers, icy fury etched on his features. "I'm cold because my grace is split, torn. It's why my grace is red too; other angels' are blue."

He sounds so broken it's almost sad. "You must be so angry," she says quietly as she focuses the feeling of wrath deep within her. Her palm grows hot and he breathes in sharply, and she knows he's feeling everything she's feeling.

His own anger roars in response to hers, and it makes her feel dizzy so she grabs his other hand to steady herself. He is angry, his rage intensified by an eternity of isolation in the cage. It positively dwarfs her own in comparison, and there's so much hate, so much focus on _humans. _The word flashes through her mind repeatedly and she sees everything through Lucifer's eyes, every flaw, every defect.

She sees, and she agrees.

Well, she thinks sardonically, she never has been much of a people person.

When she opens her eyes, their linked hands are surrounded by a bright red glow. Lucifer leans in towards her, his features lit up by the fiery light. "So how does Apocalypse Now sound?" he smirks.

Kayla grins.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Hello! This chapter turned out quite long so I've split it into two. Also thank you to you guys who are following this story, you're all awesome *throws cookies***

Kansas burns. Florida floods. The president declares the drought in Arizona a state of emergency.

Every few weeks, Lucifer leaves for a new city, a new state, a new target, and devastation ensues.

Kayla misses it all. She's left behind because apparently it's all "too dangerous" for her "weak human form" and that is not something she takes well. At all.

In between sieges, Lucifer takes her to various desolate towns under demon control. They'll spend a week there, maybe two, and then Lucifer leaves. When he returns, they move again.

While he's gone, Meg is Kayla's bodyguard of sorts, but neither of them is happy about it. Kayla is extremely vocal about the fact that she doesn't need a fucking babysitter, while Meg glowers over missing the action despite being second-in-command.

Lucifer rolls his eyes, and leaves anyway.

This time, they're in a tiny town in north Minnesota. It's the middle of December and when Kayla glances out the window of the kitchen in the tiny house her and Meg have been occupying for the past fortnight, she sees the beginnings of a blizzard coming on. There's already four feet of snow on the ground and the midday temperature is below freezing.

There's no heating system and no firewood, but Kayla doesn't mind. She's become even more accustomed to the cold in the recent weeks.

When Lucifer's around, they concentrate on unlocking the grace inside her. They sit opposite each other, cross-legged, fingers interlinked, just like the first night they met, and she forces the energy to flow into him for hours until she tires out. The first time it happened, Lucifer had frowned at her. "I thought you only slept every few days."

Kayla had yawned in response, curling up on the bed in the motel room of the town they'd been staying in. "That was before you started literally pulling all my energy out of me." Lucifer had started to complain about the pointlessness of human needs or something, and she'd promptly fell asleep while he was mid-sentence.

She'd noticed he was easier on her after that. As the intensity of the sessions has increased, her body has learned to cope. She still needs more sleep than before, but less than the average human.

Lucifer had talked in those first few weeks, talked a lot, about everything and nothing in particular, and Kayla had wondered how long it had been since he'd just talked and someone had listened.

Connecting their grace is easy now, simple. They don't need to think about it. They have a bond now, he says.

That means he doesn't have to stay for long when he comes back. Sometimes he'll just appear, grab her hand, charge up and vanish again. Kayla feels like a fucking battery those days.

During the day when he's gone, she has self-defence training with Meg; gun training and hand-to-hand combat sessions. Guns are pretty new to her, and she'd rather have a knife, but Lucifer insists she be able to deal damage from a distance. She's picking it up reasonably well; faster than Meg expected, but she had pretty low expectations to start with. In Lucifer's absence, though, she finds it difficult to concentrate. She knows she can do better, but it's like her mind is foggy; her body slow and sluggish. She feels like she needs their bond, like some kind of sick addiction, and that's terrifying.

At nights while he's away she doesn't need to sleep so she drinks a lot, partly to pass the time but mostly because she wants to hide from this feeling, to be numb again. Meg often joins her, because there's not much else to do and usually she's the one supplying the whiskey. They either talk about unimportant things or sit in silence, because once when she'd been looking for answers in the bottom of a whiskey bottle Meg had said, "What's the matter Princess? I bet you wanna talk about all your precious little _feelings,_" and Kayla had decided that she definitely didn't.

The alcohol doesn't help, not really. She still feels tired and slow and downright needy; the whiskey just blurs it out. Sometimes it's enough to forget; sometimes it tricks her into thinking it's Lucifer she needs, not the feeling of their connection, and that's worse. It makes her feel trapped and a whole other load of stuff that she very determinedly refuses to think about.

She's just plain sick of it all; this life isn't what she imagined, to put it loosely. She's sick of being left behind. She's sick of demons. She's sick of being watched constantly like they're expecting her to spontaneously combust. She can only hope that if she has to spend all her time training, she has to be training for something right? It would all be meaningless otherwise.

Kayla brings herself back to the present, rubbing her temples where a slight hangover has taken hold. She pulls herself away from the kitchen window and rakes the cupboards for anything edible the previous occupants might have left behind. Meg and Lucifer share the irritating habit of forgetting Kayla actually needs to eat.

Meg strides in as Kayla turns away from the cupboard with a handful of protein bars. It's not much, but it'll do, she supposes, as she unwraps one and sits down at the rickety wooden table. Meg sits opposite her. "Why the long face, princess?" she drawls, and Kayla gives her a tiny smile in response. She's grown to like the demon, even if it means putting up with the teasing nickname.

"I'm fucking _bored. _When was the last time we actually went anywhere? We're pretty much always trapped inside four walls." Lucifer tends to just do his angelic zappy thing to get them to new places and Kayla's horribly bitter about it. It's quicker, yeah, but she misses the road, the travelling. Worse, he commands – fucking _commands_, like who made him king of the castle? He did, she supposes, but still – that she and Meg stay inside, for "safety" or some shit. The only time they're ever outside, regardless of what town they're in, is for shooting practice, and she's too busy then to fully appreciate it. She's been going stir crazy the past few weeks. "I don't know how you cope, seriously."

"Oh I don't know, it's always a different four walls," Meg smirks, but Kayla's had enough. She pushes her chair back from the table and crosses the room to throw the remains of her protein bar in the trashcan by the back door.

"Whatever, I'm going out." She slides out the door without further preamble as Meg starts to protest, and runs into the blizzard, thankful for the low visibility. She has a half-formed plan in her mind: if she can hotwire a car – and she can, it's one of those things she had to pick up when hitchhiking with creepy truck drivers had gotten extremely irritating – she can drive to the next town and get some air, maybe stop at a diner and get some real food. She'll be back before nightfall, and Lucifer doesn't need to know a thing. Simple. Of course, Meg won't like it, but she can deal with Meg. It's worth it if she can get a few moments of freedom.

She knows she's not really thinking straight, but she's hoping that some time on her own without a town full of demons watching her will help clear her head. Maybe it's what she needs; alcohol clearly isn't working.

Later, when she's behind the wheel of an old Honda with half a tank of gas, her mind wanders back to how road-tripping with the Devil isn't what she expected. She's safe, she supposes, but it isn't enough. She needs to be out there with Lucifer. She feels his absence so strongly now, and it gnaws at her like some twisted version of loneliness.

Kayla squints at the dark road as she leaves the town. She picks a small unobvious road, practically a dirt track, but all roads gotta go somewhere right? It's covered in snow and ice, but the main roads are too risky; Meg will search them first. It's barely afternoon but the snowstorm blocks out most of the daylight; it could be late evening for all she knows. She accelerates, not too concerned about the lack of visibility; she knows no one else will be on the road.

She glimpses a sign for the next town through the flurry of snowflakes. Twelve miles ahead. She can _just_ make out the vague shape of a narrow bridge in front of her; the town will be a few miles ahead on the other side and –

Bridge. Why does she feel like she should be remembering something?

_Shit. _She brakes but the tires scramble for purchase on the ice-covered ground and it's not enough. _Godfuckingdammit. Stupid. Stupid –_

It's standard procedure. When the demons clear out a town, they destroy any transport links surrounding it. If the town is tiny enough and unknown enough, it can be enough to wipe it off the map and prevent any untoward interruptions. Cut through railway lines. Block main roads. Burn bridges.

The brakes are screaming in protest as she spins the wheel, trying desperately to slow down.

It doesn't work.

The car skids sideways and thuds hood first against the now-pointless crash barriers at the side of the bridge. Her head slams against the wheel, hard, on impact and she vaguely thinks _Lucifer, fuck,_ as she loses consciousness and the car slides sideways off the end broken bridge into the icy watery depths below.


	4. Chapter 4

She feels warm. Comfortable. Cosy even. She nestles in deeper, content. But something just doesn't feel like this is right –

It all comes back to her in a flash.

She sits bolt upright, breathing wildly, with a feeling horribly like panic constricting her chest. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders in mad frizzy curls, the way it does when she lets it air dry without attempting to tame it in any way first. She's wearing one of her old shirts and a pair of baggy sweats and she feels grateful, not for the first time, that Lucifer let her go back to her old apartment to pick up some of her stuff – like much needed clothes – that night on Halloween.

She's in the bedroom of the tiny house she's been living in with Meg, and Lucifer is perched awkwardly on the back of the rickety wooden chair across the room.

She raises an eyebrow. "You sit really weird, you know that?"

"You're incredibly stupid, you know that?" he replies, mimicking her tone. He looks _pissed. _His vessel's face is starting to peel again, like it does when he exerts his full power, and it doesn't exactly soften his overall expression.

She ignores the scathing comment as she swings her legs out of the bed to sit facing him. She swallows; her throat feels raw. "The bridge…"

"You were half-drowned. Almost dead by the time I got to you," he remarks pointedly, his eyes still angry. "You interrupted my work."

"Christ, sorry for _dying_," she mutters darkly. "I didn't _ask _you to save me." He frowns at that, because she knows as well as he does that his plans are fucked if she bites the dust. "How did you even find me?"

He cocks his head, still frowning, like she should know. "You prayed for me."

"No I di –" she cuts off, remembering the thoughts of him that flashed through her mind before she blacked out. "Wait. You can _hear _it when I think your name?"

"And any associated thoughts."

Well, that's really freakin' creepy, Kayla thinks, feeling suddenly self-conscious. She doesn't really think she's ever thought anything that bad about him, except –

"I think you need to stop drinking so much," he adds coolly, one eyebrow raised. She flushes.

Oh. Well. That's kinda embarrassing.

She scrambles to change the subject. "Yeah, well, you can take your pissy face off now. I'm clearly fine." She stands and stretches, her muscles still feeling a bit achy from being soaked through with icy cold water.

He stands too and moves closer to her, pissy face still very much _on. _"You defied me," he says in a dangerous tone. "I demanded you stay inside with Meg."

She rolls her eyes, because no matter how often he tries this I'm-big-scary-Satan routine on her he doesn't seem to realise that he _can't _scare her. It's like a physical impossibility. "Dude, you can't keep me caged in here like some kind of pet," she retorts, not missing the way he grimaces at the word _caged_. "I need to go out sometimes." He shakes his head, like she's asking for the impossible. She feels like she may as well. "Take me with you. When you go."

His face hardens. "No."

"But –"

"You have literally just proven that you can't even go out for ten minutes without dying."

Kayla scowls, because that's not fair, but she hadn't expected much more. "Fine. Whatever. Go back to work." She reaches out to touch his arm and heal his vessel, but he shrugs her off.

"I just had to use most of my grace to heal you; believe me, you are in no state to heal. Anyway, I have to have a little chat with Meg first." His tone is frosty. When Kayla gives him a questioning look, he returns a hard stare. "She's supposed to keep you safe. That's her job. She failed."

Kayla's very much aware of how Lucifer disciplines his demons. "No," she says, feeling rage rising up inside her. Meg's been the only friend she's had in this new life _and _in her old one, and she's the only company she's got when Lucifer pisses off, and he wants to take that away from her? When he raises his eyebrows, she goes on, "I won't let you."

He laughs at that. He leans in towards her, his voice a whisper. "You really think you can stop me from doing anything?"

_Yeah_, she thinks, _I'm kinda your powerhouse. _But she's just so incredulous that she doesn't even get a say in any of this, when she's practically the reason any of this is happening at all, that her immediate reaction is to swing for him. Hard.

The punch doesn't do anything, except maybe break half of the bones in her hand, but he still looks comically stunned for a split second, before she finds herself pinned against the bedroom wall by her shoulders.

"Let me go," she snarls, as she squirms in his firm grasp. He just looks at her, angry but with a tiny spark of amusement in his eyes.

"You are absolutely _infuriating_, you know that?" he growls, his face mere millimetres from hers, before he disappears in a flurry of air.

Kayla is left alone, frozen against the wall, with the sound of her heart beating too hard, because honestly, that was kind of thrilling.

She shakes her head and snaps out of it; she is not going there. She crosses the room and curls up on the bed, cradling her sore hand. She worries about Meg.

A waste of emotion apparently, as the demon bursts angrily through the door not ten minutes later. Kayla sits up in surprise. "You're okay?"

"Well, no thanks to you, princess. Thanks for putting my ass on the line." Kayla looks down and she guesses she deserves that, but when she looks back up Meg is _smiling_. "No, seriously, I mean you're a total bitch for fucking off like that, but –" she pauses, struggling to get the words out, "– I know you said something, did something, I don't know, or I wouldn't be here talking to you. So uh, yeah. Thanks."

Kayla looks at her in disbelief. Meg scuffs the floor with her boot, looking almost _bashful. _"Meg," she begins carefully, "are you going _soft_ on me?"

Meg grins. "Tell anyone and I'll kill you myself, Lucifer or no Lucifer."

* * *

When Lucifer comes back from his various Apocalypse-incurring missions, he usually checks in with his head demons first, organises new plans, sends teams to clear out new towns. Seeing Kayla is last on his list.

Which is why she's stunned when he appears in the bedroom a few hours later, clearly seeing her _first_.

Their earlier fight is forgotten as she takes in his appearance. He's clutching a silver sword like his life depends on it; his eyes are unfocused. His vessel is wearing even thinner than it had been the night they'd met, and one side of his shirt is drenched in blood. His right arm is scarlet with congealing blood from fingertips to elbow. It's not his.

His expression would be enough alone to tell her something had gone horribly wrong. He looks lost, broken; like he's not entirely sure what just happened or how he got here.

"The blood?" she asks, because she knows he could be pristine with a snap of his fingers if he wanted. He glances down at himself as if he hadn't even noticed it before.

"Gatecrashed a Pagan dinner party," he says in a poor attempt at his usual snarky humour, his entire voice wrapped in disbelief and she knows that's not the full story. She moves closer to him and sees how badly damaged his vessel is: the skin is peeling off his arms and neck as well as his face and the dark circles around his eyes are pitch black. She reaches out to gently touch his arm, not bothered about the blood, intending to heal his vessel. She feels kind of guilty that he had to charge off weakened after healing her, after all. But he twitches away from her knowingly. "No," he mouths hoarsely, that glazed look still in his eyes. He shakes his head and repeats it, stronger this time. "No. Don't."

Kayla knows some bad shit has definitely gone down now, and she's not sure what to do exactly. But the demons can't see him like this, and he came to her for a reason.

She takes a deep breath and ever so gently reaches for his arm again. "I won't," she says, and his arm is like cold marble under her fingers. But after a second he relaxes and his skin becomes pliant; human-feeling, and he allows her to pry the blade out of his clenched fist and slowly guide him towards the bed where he sits down. She places the sword safely on the nightstand.

His eyes still have that distant look as she gently pushes his bloodied shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. She bundles it unceremoniously on the floor. She tugs on the hem of his undershirt, also soaked through with blood, and he's still not looking at her as she pulls his arms above his head so she can remove the garment. His arms are like dead weights as they flop back to his side.

His bare torso is even worse condition than his face; angry welts have broken out right across his chest. There's not much of his vessel left.

She frowns. "Stay here," she instructs, although really she knows he's not in any kind of state to be flying off anywhere. She heads to the bathroom and grabs the basin from under the sink, filling it with water. It's cold, because there's no heating system and there's a blizzard raging outside, but she knows it won't bother him. She slings a couple of towels over her arm and carries the basin of water back to the bedroom where Lucifer hasn't moved from his frozen position.

She sits beside him and places the basin at her feet. She dips the towel into the water and wrings it out, and begins to ever so gently clean the blood from his arm. It's thick and congealed and beginning to dry stubbornly in places, but she persists determinedly, only stopping occasionally to rinse the towel.

She hisses when she sees the condition of his vessel's arm under the blood. Whole chunks of his skin and flesh are missing, and she can see the bone shining through in some places. She tries to ignore it and moves down to his hand, where the blood has begun to cake in between his fingers and around his fingernails.

Lucifer is completely out of it now, not even registering what Kayla's doing. When she takes his palm to turn his hand around, she sends tiny currents of healing energy through her fingertips, wondering if he'll notice. By the time she's washed off all the blood and gently dabbed him dry with the other towel, his vessel is half healed.

Suddenly he jerks, as though waking up suddenly. "Gabriel," he says clearly but with a dark tone. Kayla looks up at his face, surprised. He often talks about his younger brother fondly, reminiscing about memories from eons ago; before he was cast out of Heaven, before the cage. Gabriel is his favourite, the one he misses the most.

"You saw him?" Kayla ventures.

He looks down at her, his eyes clear for the first time since he appeared. "I killed him."

"Oh." _Shit, _she adds mentally, because she knows he would never do that unless he had another choice, which means whatever happened must've been awful. She can't say anything else, doesn't know what she could possibly even say, so they sit in silence for a long time. She traces circles on his palm, continuing to heal him.

He glances down, taking in what she's doing for the first time. "You didn't have to do that," he says, gesturing to his now blood-free arm and the basin of crimson-tinted water on the floor. Kayla shrugs. Lucifer looks down at his chest and then back to her, eyebrows raised. "I'm half-naked," he remarks, sounding considerably more himself.

Kayla refuses to blush as she meets his gaze. "You stank of Pagan," she retorts, wrinkling her nose. He chuckles at that, and something feels different; there's been a shift in their relationship, and she decides to push it. "Take me with you next time?"

Lucifer contemplates that for a long moment. "Yeah," he says, and he actually smiles, a real smile, not his usual smirk. "Yeah, okay."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Thanks for all your lovely comments and follows! Sorry it's been a while - I've had college finals and boring stuff like that. But hey, it's my birthday today (I'm now officially an adult - how terrifying) so I thought I'd get a chapter up. Enjoy!**

* * *

The next few days are spent planning, training, preparing. They're in a small town in Wyoming this time, just off of Route 25. It's chilly, but not snowing.

The former occupants are dead or fled. Kayla doesn't dwell on it.

She sits in on the meetings with Lucifer and his head demons. Well, "head" is probably being generous. There's Meg, who has been a little skittish around Lucifer since the whole Kayla-almost-drowning-under-her-watch incident, but otherwise she's as devoted as ever and Lucifer doesn't question it. The rest, the ones accompanying them on the mission, are crossroad demons – simply because they can teleport. Much quicker than driving halfway across the country.

The mission's a simple one: unleash a strain of croatoan virus on a small population and let Pestilence do the rest. The demons will carry out the dirty work while Lucifer oversees proceedings from a distance. Part of Kayla knows this is just a cover for keeping her away from potential danger, but she doesn't care. Her feet itch to be out there, doing something, anything, useful instead of lying around like a spare part.

The meeting draws to a close. Lucifer tells them to be ready to leave in an hour and the demons begin to file out the door. "How d'you know I won't get infected?" Kayla asks, when her and Lucifer are the only ones left. She knows if there was a possibility the disease could affect her she wouldn't be allowed anywhere near this job.

Lucifer – back in his usual, now blood-free shirts, after what Kayla likes to call "Gabriel-gate" in her head – turns to face where she's sitting perched on a desk pushed against the side of the room. He leans against the wall on his shoulder in an oddly human way. "My grace will keep you immune," he says, as though it's obvious. She supposes it is; she's never even had chickenpox.

She nods and hops off the desk, stretching out and stifling a yawn. Lucifer frowns. "You should have slept."

"'M fine," she says through another yawn. She mentally slaps herself and tries to wake up. When that doesn't work, she shrugs it off and walks to the door. "Suppose I'd better go put on an extra pair of socks or something." She flashes him a grin as she passes him. "It's a big day."

He reaches out and grabs her elbow before she gets to the door, stopping her. "Take this. I know you're good with a knife."

In his hand, offered hilt first, is Gabriel's sword. She hasn't seen it since she pried the blood-covered metal out of Lucifer's grip when Gabriel died, but the sword is clean now and she can look at it in more detail. There are golden engravings along the hilt – she thinks they're Enochian – and a strange kind of sapphire inlay just underneath the pommel that wraps thinly around the grip. It seems to irradiate the deep blue color faintly, and it hurts her eyes as she inspects it.

His words, the way he holds the sword out to her, his body language – it's all very casual, but she knows the significance behind this exchange, and he knows she knows. Neither of them mentions it, so she plays along. "Thanks, Luci," she says cheerily. The nickname rolls off her tongue without permission and they both freeze; him surprised, her knowing only a select few call him that – are _allowed_ to call him that. After a millisecond Lucifer relaxes and nods slightly as if to give his assent, and she grins, reaches forward and grasps the hilt of the sword.

The room spins.

A faint sting tingles down her spine and her vision swims. Lucifer's still holding the other end of the sword so she grasps his forearm with her other hand to steady herself as she attempts to snap out of it. She's vaguely aware of his other hand instinctively reaching out to help hold her up.

It only lasts a couple of seconds and then she's completely fine. The only evidence anything strange occurred is the death grip of her left hand on Lucifer's right arm. "Are you alright?" he asks, concern leaking on to his usually perfectly controlled features.

Kayla gasps like she's forgotten how to breathe. Maybe she has. She forces herself to look up at Lucifer with a bright smile. "Woah. Dizzy turn." She sounds the part, but she can't seem to pry her fingers from around is arm.

Lucifer only frowns deeper, and gently uncurls her steel fingers from him with his free hand. He holds it for a second longer than necessary and she's struck again by how cool his skin is in comparison to hers. She always forgets.

He lets go of the sword and Kayla realizes she's still holding it. "I, uh, I should go," she says, turning to leave as she slides the sword under her belt, letting her jacket fall forward to cover it from view. Any traces of tiredness have been wiped away; every one of her senses is on high alert, her body pumped full of adrenaline. "See you in an hour."

She still feels his eyes burning into her back even when her restless legs take her halfway across the tiny town.

* * *

In this small pocket of civilization, it's easy to believe the world is ending.

Kayla watches coldly from the window as the apocalyptic setting unfolds below her. The infected run riot, destroying everything they can. Some have weapons: guns, knives, crowbars, anything they can get their hands on. The rest blindly destroy everything in their path with their bare hands. The air is thick with the screams of the uninfected, car alarms and the sound of glass smashing. Smoke begins to obscure her view, rising from overturned vehicles and burning buildings.

It's pure chaos.

Kayla turns back to the scene in the room with a smirk playing on her lips. Pestilence has arrived.

"Everything's in order," he's saying to Luci, "we'll be ready to hit the big cities in around six, maybe eight months, provided you want them hit all at the same time. It would be quicker to target them individually, but –"

"No," Lucifer cuts across smoothly. "Hit them all simultaneously. We have the time."

"As you wish." A particularly loud crash resonates from outside the window and Pestilence's eyes flicker towards the source of noise. He seems to notice Kayla for the first time. "What have we here Lucifer? Have you brought me a _specimen?" _His eyes roam over Kayla hungrily. Her right hand hovers over the sword hilt under her jacket and she stares him out. "You know, I could create all kinds of beautiful symptoms to go along with the virus if I had the right," his face splits into a sleazy grin "_petri dish." _Kayla narrows her eyes.

She wants to laugh at Pestilence's reaction when Lucifer says, in a voice full of ice and thunder, "That will _not_ be necessary." She opts for a lazy smirk.

Pestilence's eyes flick between her and Lucifer like he's watching a tennis match. His features are slack, his mouth agape. "But I could –"

Lucifer's fist clenches at his side and the rest of Pestilence's words are cut off by a harsh choking sound. His hands claw at his throat and Lucifer looms over him, tall and threatening. "_Not _while you are bound to me. You will do as I say and I am telling you she is _mine_, understand?" His voice is quiet but chilling. Any other time, Kayla would be indignant, pissed even, if some guy was staking claims on her like that. Any other time Kayla would step in and make a comment about not needing some douchebag to fight her battles. But this time, Kayla feels a thrill as he defends her.

Because it's _Lucifer_.

Luci releases his hold over Pestilence when he nods hastily. "Didn't think you were the type for pets, boss," he snarls and disappears before Lucifer can do something much worse than crush his windpipe.

Kayla turns back to the window. The crowds outside have dispersed. The sound of car alarms has risen to fever pitch, practically deafening her, and she starts when she feels Lucifer standing right behind her. He silences the harsh noise with a sweep of his hand and just like that, the landscape is peaceful once more. Just a little burnt and war torn around the edges.

"I think we're done here," he tells her, and she nods and turns around in time to see him stiffen for a split second. He relaxes and smiles. "Ah," he says, as Meg appears in the doorway, managing to somehow appear both urgent and unhurried.

"Got a problem Father. Guess who?" Her drawl is as slow as ever as she leans against the doorjamb.

Lucifer nods, unsurprised. He smiles wider as he grabs Kayla's arm and they fly.

Flying is how Kayla likes to think of it, anyway. It's easier to wrap her mind around that than teleportation.

They reappear instantly in the parking lot behind the building they were just in. Kayla stumbles a little on the landing - she seems to be getting worse rather than better at handling the strange sensation – and notices the stinging sensation in her back from earlier has returned with a vengeance. She shrugs it off best she can and focuses on the scene in front of her.

On the other side of the lot two men stand, both armed to the teeth, both with matching gritty expressions. The Winchesters. More importantly, the true vessels.

The shorter of the two has already whipped out a revolver with a distinctively long barrel and is aiming it at Lucifer's skull. "I don't know why they bother," Lucifer mutters. "They already know their fancy guns are useless."

Kayla wonders which one is Luci's vessel. She's still looking at the one pointing the gun in their direction. She scans him critically. Pissed isn't the word for his expression. He's wearing it like a mask, using his anger as fuel and swallowing down all his other emotions. She narrows her eyes skeptically. The guy's a mess, even she can see that.

When her gaze travels to the taller of the two, she's surprised. He's younger than the other, maybe around her age. He's angry too, _only _angry, angrier than his brother, but not at Lucifer specifically. At _everything_. He reminds her of himself, before Luci found her. But his expression is calm and controlled in a way she never was, although his confidence wavers the more he looks at Lucifer.

The he looks at her and it's like he's magnetizing her, pulling her body towards him without consent. She feels it at her core, an insufferable urge to stand at this man's side and never leave. She grits her teeth, her feet scuffing the ground as she uses every ounce of self-control she has to stay still. When her resolve isn't enough, she grasps Lucifer's forearm, trying to anchor himself to him. He glances over at her, confused. "Oh," he says quietly, like he sees the battle raging inside her. "I didn't think – that's not – hmm." His eyes meet hers and his expression softens. "Here," he says, taking her hand in his and connecting their grace. It placates whatever weird kind of uncontrollable need is inside her and she exhales, allowing herself to relax. "Better?" She nods.

The Winchesters have been watching this exchange with agape expressions, although they can't see the grace glowing from between Kayla and Luci's entwined hands. The taller one is curious, the shorter slack-jawed and incredulous. "Son of a bitch has got himself a girlfriend!" he proclaims disbelievingly.

"Dean… she's human." The taller – Sam – lowers his gun slightly, Kayla notes.

"Ah, little Sammy. My vessel. No wonder you're attracted to him, I _would _look devastatingly handsome wearing him." He flashes a grin at Sam, who scowls in response. "But," he adds, wrinkling his nose a little, "the conscience has got to go." Kayla laughs loudly.

Sam looks down, expression unreadable. Dean positively _fizzles _with anger. "Don't you talk about him like that, you bastard."

Lucifer rounds on him with a bored expression. "Oh, hello Dean." His voice is noticeably cooler. "Almost didn't see you under all those shirts. Why you boys try to wear every single item of clothing you own at once I'll never know." He rolls his eyes.

Dean doesn't retort, but instead glances at their hands again, suspicion lining his features. Luci notices. "Where's your pretty boyfriend, Dean?" Dean's eyes snap back up to Lucifer's, jaw clenched. His hand noticeably tightens around the gun. "Haven't seen him since he burned poor Meg half to death. I'd like a word with him sometime."

Dean's eyes narrow. "You shut your mouth about Cas."

Lucifer chuckles. "Such a way with words. My brother," he says to Kayla in way of explanation, "has the most fascinating obsession with humanity. This one in particular. It's almost kind of cute – if a lion abandoning his pride for a cockroach is cute."

Dean bristles. "If you want to get him _really _riled up," Luci adds, quietly so only Kayla can hear, "mention Detroit in an ominous tone. Works like a charm." Kayla laughs, the sound harsh and echoing in the chilly air.

Sam looks up, straight at Lucifer. "Who is she?" Lucifer stares back for a few moments, and Kayla's got to hand it to Sam, he doesn't back down.

"She has a name," Kayla mutters defensively, free hand instinctively resting on Gabriel's sword. Her vision blurs a little around the edges and the stinging in her back becomes a slow burn, but she ignores it. She can handle it.

Lucifer smirks at her. "_Kayla _is the reason I don't need you anymore, Sammy. That's as far as she concerns you."

Kayla watches the brothers' expressions closely. Dean's is all relief and daring hope with a touch of skepticism. Sam's is much the same, but she sees a flicker of disappointment cross his face, followed by disgust at himself.

Lucifer notices too but he doesn't mention it, or mock Sam. He simply frowns thoughtfully. "Well, thanks for the chat boys, but we have business to attend to."

Before the Winchesters can react, they're gone.

Kayla's hand is still on the sword. Her vision swims as Lucifer pulls her through dimensions, and the pain between her shoulder blades becomes unbearable. It's like someone is branding her with hot metal.

Before she can register what's happening, she's blind and burning.

A horrible terrifying shriek echoes around her. She's vaguely aware that the sound is coming from her own mouth. She can't stop it.

All she can see is darkness and she's spinning, she's falling, she's on fire. Going down in flames.


	6. Chapter 6

The awful screaming has stopped but the fire still consumes her.

Kayla is vaguely aware of her feet thudding on to solid ground. Somewhere, far away, Lucifer is saying her name. She shakes her head, trying to see, trying not to _burn_.

Because surely that's all she's doing. Burning. Her skin bubbling, her insides liquefying; really, how is she even still alive –

Cold hands cup her face and the relief is so instant, so _pure_ that she sobs with it. But it's not enough and she presses forward into his touch. The darkness shifts and she can see him, albeit hazily, his face tilted down towards her as he repeatedly asks something she can't hear. The pain is smoldering now, waiting to burst back into flame, so she instinctively reaches for him, craving his cold touch.

Her hands force themselves clumsily under his shirt and slide round his back. One of his hands moves from her face to the back of her neck as she presses herself against his chest and the blinding pain subsides enough that she can hear what he's saying, something about his grace not allowing him to heal her. She tightens her grip around him, needing his iciness to fend off the flames.

Her body moves on instinct, before she even realizes what she's doing. Her hand slides out from under his shirt to grasp roughly at the back of his neck as she reaches up on tiptoe to press her lips hard against his.

The effect is instant; grace glows where their lips join and the pain flows smoothly out of her. She opens her eyes and her vision is clear.

Then she starts, because she's nose to nose with Lucifer and their lips are touching.

He's frozen, eyes still open, hand limp on the back of her neck.

Kayla breaks the contact and takes a hasty step back. Two steps back. "Um," she says, because she's sure she's overstepped all kinds of boundaries.

He still hasn't moved, his eyes trained to hers, narrowing slightly like he's trying to work something out.

Then he disappears.

Yeah, Kayla had expected that. She looks around. She recognizes the place; it's the one room cabin at the edge of the town in Wyoming she'd opted to stay in. The wooden walls are covered with protective symbols and Kayla had spent her free time trying to memorize them. There's a kitchen area in one corner and a bed in the other. Behind her, a couch and a tv.

Kayla sighs and pushes a hand over her face, closing her eyes and running her fingers through her unruly hair. _I just kissed Lucifer. Lucifer. Shit._

She tries to ignore the jump in her stomach as her imagination tries to expand on that particular line of thought.

She has more important things to worry about. Like the fact she just hallucinated she was burning alive. She feels so worn out in a way she's never felt before.

She takes a deep breath and steadies herself before opening her eyes. Three inches from her face is fucking _Lucifer._

She jumps approximately two feet backwards, colliding with the back of the couch. "Could you fucking _not?" _she grumbles. It's as she pulls herself to her feet, swaying dangerously, that she realizes just how bone-deep her exhaustion is.

"You need to sleep. We can talk about your little incident in the morning." Lucifer grabs her hand and pulls her towards the bed and she's too tired to complain or fight, or even make a snide remark about how he's finally taking her to bed. "I heard that," he chuckles as she pulls off her boots and slides under the covers.

She groans. "Stay outta my head, it's creepy."

As exhaustion takes over, she makes out Luci's voice saying, "I'll stay here," before she slips into the welcome relief of sleep.

* * *

Kayla falls.

She tumbles and spins in the air, flashes of green and blue alternating in her vision as she speeds towards the earth. She's dizzy and terrified and she thinks her stomach might just fall out of her mouth, if her heart doesn't give out first.

None of that can even compare to the pain of the fire engulfing her form, turning her into a fireball hurtling through the sky like a shooting star. She's dying, she can feel it.

_My wings_, she thinks wildly. _My wings –_

The pain stops and her vision changes as she finds herself lying in a field full of knee-high golden wheat stalks staring up at a bright azure sky. The place seems familiar, although she's sure she's never been anywhere even remotely like this, and there's an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu settling in her stomach.

She knows instinctively that Lucifer is here too, so she's not surprised when she turns her head and sees him lying with him hands tucked beneath his head, eyes closed, sunbeams dancing along his body like he was made to bathe in light.

"I'm dreaming," she realizes. He opens one eye and then the other, rolling over the prop himself on one elbow beside her.

"Yes, but I'm really here," he says, and Kayla mentally adds invading dreams to the list of shit angels can do. "You were screaming in your sleep. I tried to pull you into a more pleasant setting and somehow we ended up here." He frowns, like he's not happy about it, before continuing. "Have you been here before?" Kayla frowns and shakes her head, regardless of what the sick feeling in her gut is telling her. Maybe she's dreamed of here before and she just doesn't remember. Like some kind of happy place her mind goes to.

Except the feeling tells her it's a _bad_ place. She uneasily pushes the thought away.

Lucifer studies her for a moment. "What's been happening to you recently? The screaming and the nightmares – and the impromptu kissing?" The bastard is _grinning_ at her, although his eyes are still concerned.

Kayla scowls because it feels like he's laughing at her. "I think your grace is affecting me somehow. The sword, too. I can't explain it." A thought strikes her suddenly. "Luci, what was falling like?"

"Why would you ask that?" He can't quite meet her eyes, and she wonders if it's because of the pain of falling or the shame of it, and he hears her, of course he does. "Neither. Why do you want to know?"

_Stop reading my mind, you dick, _Kayla projects extra loudly – he laughs, and she smiles back inadvertently – before answering him. "I think I might be tapping into your memories somehow. It feels like I'm falling; like I'm burning. I could feel wings – my wings – turning to ash." She shudders at the memory of the pain.

Lucifer leans over her, still propped on one arm. His other hand moves to cup her face; fingers cool against her sun-warmed skin. "I'm so sorry," he says softly. "You shouldn't have to experience that."

Kayla just shrugs, trying to ignore the spark travelling through her in reaction to his touch. "It's not your fault, not really," and Lucifer looks _pained. _She wonders what she said.

They stay in easy silence for a while, both contemplating.

It's as she looks up at him that she realizes the sun is behind him, catching each golden strand of hair and surrounding his head in a perfect halo. His whole body glows with light, and Kayla can almost picture his wings, seeping out on either side of his body, catching the rays of the sun.

Her stomach flips at the sight. "You're beautiful, Luci," she breathes, and his something in his expression just _opens._

She barely gets a chance to notice because suddenly his lips are on hers and her breath catches and her stomach twists because this is so much better than the awkward crashing of lips that occurred earlier. This kiss is long and slow and deep, their lips moving together in perfect harmony and setting her blood alight and wow, when did she turn into a lovesick teenager?

But she doesn't care, because she didn't realize how much she needed this until now as she winds a hand into his hair and pulls him down on top of her. His lips part in surprise and she seizes the opportunity to slide her tongue into his mouth. The kiss changes pace and Lucifer groans a little and she feels pretty pleased with herself for being able to pull the sound out of him. He bites down on her lower lip and a moan escapes her as her other hand finds its way under his shirt and her nails scrape lightly down his back.

Lucifer breaks away from her and she whines a little at the loss but then his lips are on her neck, trailing hot and heavy kisses all the way down to her collarbone. He sucks on the skin there and warmth pools in her stomach as she shamelessly bucks her hips up to meet his, nails digging into his back as she's struck with uncontrollable need. He thrusts back against her and lets out a sound that lets her know he's just as wrecked as she is, if the hardness in his jeans wasn't enough to go by.

She pushes the sleeves of his button-down past his shoulders and he tears his mouth away from her skin long enough to pull the shirt off his arms. She tugs on the hem of his undershirt and he sheds that too as she pulls her own shirt off. She's bare underneath.

Kayla presses her mouth to his as her hands map out his chest, sliding down to his stomach and slipping around his waist where she can pull him back on top of her. A filthy moan slips out of her as she feels the cold expanse of his skin pressed to her. Her nipples rub against his hard chest as he thrusts against her, and one of his hands cups her breast before sliding down her waist towards her pants.

"Shit, Luci," Kayla groans against his lips as her own hand slips around to the front of his jeans. He freezes and before she can say _what_ –

Kayla opens her eyes to the darkness of the cabin. "Fuck!" she shouts out angrily as she sits up. Lucifer is nowhere to be seen. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

_Frustrated is not the word._

She gets out of bed and pulls on her boots. She needs a walk. And possibly to kill something.

She grumbles angrily as she crosses the room and throws open the door to the cabin. She steps out into the night; half-hoping Lucifer will appear and tell her not to be stupid just so she can shout _what the fuck _at him.

What she's not expecting is, the second she leaves the protection of the wards that keep her hidden, for a guy in a dodgy trenchcoat to grab her and hold an angel blade to her throat. "You need to come with me."

Kayla's own angel blade lies forgotten on the nightstand.

* * *

**A/N: Merry Christmas! I hope you're all having a lovely day 3**

_P.S. it's 3:30am and I probably haven't edited this as much as I should have, but I hope you enjoyed this installment!_


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Thank you all for the lovely reviews and follows! I'm pretty sure the next chapter will be the last. I hope you like this one!**

* * *

Kayla's let herself get complacent. What with arguably the oldest, most powerful being on Earth being at her side more often than not, she's began to let some of her paranoia drop and she's not been protecting herself the way she used to.

This is why she is chained to a chair inside a ring of unlit holy oil, guarded by two strong armed men and an angel. They're in some kind of dank basement and she bitterly realizes how similar her situation is to the night she met Lucifer. Except she can't wiggle her way out of this one.

The room is covered in demon traps but not angel wardings and it doesn't take a genius to work out she's bait.

Lucifer won't fall for it. She hopes he won't fall for it.

She tries very hard to not focus on Sam, remembering the uncomfortable experience in the parking lot. The guys are talking about their "plan" or whatever – yeah, like a tiny bit of holy fire is going to be enough to kill the devil – but the angel is staring at her, head tilted, eyes squinted like he's looking at the sun. She stares him out, because damn if she isn't going to get through this with a little dignity.

"Dean." His voice is like gravel as he interrupts the conversation. "She's not human."

Dean lets out a triumphant "I knew it!" as Sam squints in confusion.

"What d'you mean, Cas?" Sam's voice is stirring that magnetizing pull in her again, and she fights to keep her breathing steady and her body still.

The angel – _Cas_ – crosses the room to her, placing his palm on her forehead. She squirms away from the touch. "Hey, hands off the goods, pretty boy."

He ignores her, of course, and then she can _feel _him searching through her head, and it's the weirdest fucking thing. Worse, she doesn't know _what_ he's seeing, it's like she's wearing a blindfold inside her head, and yeah, that makes so much sense.

Cas steps back towards Dean, still studying her. "She doesn't remember who she is."

"Excuse me?" The words fly out of Kayla's mouth before she can stop them, because she most definitely remembers who she is. Except the words have struck a chord in her somewhere, but she doesn't know why.

They take no heed of her. "Like…?" Dean says slowly. Cas nods. Irritatingly cryptic. "So we can't even get any info outta her."

"She knows very little."

Kayla disagrees, but given the situation she decides this would be a good time to keep her mouth shut and play innocent.

Dean sighs. "Figures. We'll stick with bait then. C'mon, we'll take demon watch up top. Sam can guard our little guest."

Kayla snaps to attention at that, because _fuck_, sitting with Sam will be worse torture than anything they could have inflicted on her. She curses the bit of Lucifer's grace inside her that wants so desperately to be inside Sam instead.

She'll just have to not look at, speak to, or listen to Sam. Great.

_Lucifer, if you can hear me, you know this is a damn trap. Stay the fuck away. _She projects the last part extra loud, 'cause hey, she's still kinda pissed about whatever that was in her dream.

Sam clears his throat as Dean and Cas go upstairs – Dean parting with, "The place is soundproofed, no screaming," earning him an eye roll, because she doesn't really do 'damsel in distress' – and Kayla can see Sam's movements in her peripheral vision. He's shuffling awkwardly, rolling his shoulders and clenching and unclenching his hand around his gun. Maybe she's not the only one that's uncomfortable.

There's silence for a while, and then Sam says, "It's Kayla, right?"

She cringes inwardly, because what kind of kidnapper strikes up small talk with his prisoner? She keeps her eyes firmly trained on her shackled ankles. "If maintaining a first name basis with your hostages helps you sleep at night, then sure, I'm Kayla."

He huffs a little, and she chances a glance - the pull is still there, but much weaker than before. She lets out a laugh at his expression; he actually looks pained, like a kicked puppy. "God Sam, are you sure your Luci's vessel?" Kayla shakes her head a little. "Don't think you've got the bite for it."

He grimaces. "Good."

* * *

They've been in silence for a long time, only broken occasionally by Kayla's chains rattling every time her body jerks uncomfortably to Sam's presence and Sam clicking the safety on his gun on and off, when Kayla feels Lucifer's presence. _Lucifer, no, _she thinks, a millisecond before he materializes in front of Sam. "You stupid son of a bitch," she groans, and he turns towards her, raising an eyebrow, before facing Sam again.

Sam's body is alert, every muscle tensed. His eyes flick towards the stairs.

"Dean and Castiel? Oh, they're a bit busy. I brought some friends," Lucifer says lightly, and Sam looks torn. "Sam, you're not part of this story anymore. I don't need you. We'll leave and you'll never see us again." Sam actually looks as though he might be considering it, and he puts his hand on Lucifer's shoulder, much to both Kayla and Lucifer's surprise.

Lucifer lets his guard down, unsuspecting, and Sam takes his chance. He pushes against the angel roughly, and Lucifer falls backwards inside the ring of holy oil.

"Sorry, Lucifer," Sam says, as he drops a lit match and runs upstairs to help his brother. The holy fire springs to life, encircling Luci and Kayla.

"I will never understand that boy. Every time I think I've got through to him…" Lucifer tails off thoughtfully.

"How many demons did you bring?"

Lucifer frowns. "All of them," he says, like it's goddamn obvious.

Kayla curses at him as he makes short work of the chains and shackles and she stands and kicks the chair out of the circle in anger – she mostly wants to kick Lucifer, but she doesn't fancy a broken foot – and the chair skitters across the room, unharmed by the fire. Kayla stares at it thoughtfully. She's not an angel either.

Lucifer catches Kayla by the wrist before she can follow through on the thought. "My grace inside you – I don't know what would happen."

Kayla _hmphs_ and spins to face him. "Okay, what the hell? Why did you come here _into a trap_ and why would you bring all the _motherfucking demons into a trap _and why did you leave before –"

"Kayla," Lucifer says. There's a dangerous edge to his tone.

"No! There's all kinds of shit you're not telling me and –" her eyes narrow as she remembers Cas' words. "Do I remember who I am?"

Lucifer's expression is always calm, but Kayla's become an expert at reading it. He looks like she's just punched him in the gut. "What?"

"Do I remember who I am?" She repeats, every inch of her challenging him. "Am I who I think I am?"

Lucifer's expression becomes resigned; cold. "No."

"Then who am I?"

Lucifer sighs, and places his palm on her forehead, his fingers curling into her hair.

* * *

_Kael knows the battle is lost when her comrades start falling around her, but she won't give in._

_She wrenches the sword out of the lifeless body of her opponent, leaving the corpse on the battlefield as she ducks around the angels engaged in battle, seeking a new target._

_She freezes when she stumbles out of the writhing mass of bodies into a perfect clearing of calm; the eye of the storm. Michael and Lucifer are circling each other; the battle raging on around them. Lucifer's once beautiful wings are lifeless, dragging in the dirt behind him. He's badly injured._

_They don't see her._

_"You will not win this, brother," Michael screams over the din of war. "Our Father supports me; you cannot hope to overpower Him."_

_"You think I want to overpower Him? You think I want to overpower _you?_" Lucifer laughs coldly. "Michael, this fight is not about you, or Him, or any of us. This is about _them_ –you know I cannot kneel to them."_

_"Our Father commands we serve them."_

_"Our Father has gone blind in old age! You've seen them! They're hateful; they kill their own kind –"_

_Michael stops circling, his sword lowered slightly. "Brother," he says sadly, "look at yourself. Look around. How many of our own kind have you killed because of your pride?"_

_Lucifer stands opposite him, mirroring his stance. "Brother, join me, I beg of you. Stand with me and this will end. I never wanted any of this."_

_Michael lifts his sword. "Lucifer, I cannot. I can hardly recognize you anymore."_

_Reluctantly, Lucifer shifts into battle stance. "Then so be it." His voice is thick with sadness, and Kael pains for him, before one of Michael's angels barrels into her from behind and she resumes the fight._

_There's a deafening clap of thunder, and then she's falling._

_She screams; her grace is on fire, wings turning to ash, tumbling through the air towards the Earth, God's last perfect handiwork._

_It goes on forever._

_When she lands, she's in a field of golden wheat under an azure sky, sunlight streaming on to her body. It's her first time on Earth, and she is astounded by the beauty of creation surrounding her. She wonders vaguely if this is maybe not so bad a place to die._

_As she's slipping, waiting for the last of her grace to be consumed, she hears him. "Kael!"_

_"Luci?" Where do angels go when they die? She will find out, soon._

_Then his true form is kneeling over her, cradling her head. Through a haze of pain, she sees the sunlight glinting on his form, lighting him up brighter than any star. The ache in her eases a little, and she smiles up at him. "You're beautiful, Luci."_

_He doesn't smile back, his entire being twisted in concern and pain. She notices his wings are still injured but intact. "Your wings…"_

_"They'll heal."_

_"Oh," Kael coughs on the ashy remains of her grace. "I won't." She grins weakly, then sobers quickly. "We lost the war. You've fell."_

_Lucifer leans over her, cradling her form with his own. "I don't care. Kael, I'm so sorry, I should never have let you fight –"_

_"If you had commanded me not to, I would have ripped off your wings myself." Pain makes her blunt, but he gets the point. "How would it have looked to your soldiers if your lieutenant had not fought?"_

_He smiles in spite of himself. "They would have said I was going soft on my bondmate. They believe you a better fighter than I, some say I should have stepped down, given you command."_

_"I assume they said that behind your back, knowing how easily your pride is wounded," she teases. She reaches around to her wings, but instead of feathers she pulls away a handful of cinders and burnt bone. They both can't suppress a choked sound of horror as the ashes crumble in her hand and fly into the wind. "Not so good a fighter, anymore." She winces as the remnant of her grace gives a painful pulse, desperately trying to hang on to life._

_Lucifer looks as wounded as her for a moment, but then his expression changes; becomes resolute. "There is a way I can save you."_

_"I think I'm a bit beyond repair," she says weakly, but understands when she sees his unwavering expression. The realization horrifies her. "Lucifer, _no_."_

_"Where is your sword, Kael?" he says sternly, and she's not in any position to fight._

_"I don't have it." His eyes widen._

_"You went into battle without your sword? Are you deluded?"_

_"Give me some recognition, Luci. I disarmed one of Michael's side and killed him at the beginning of the fight; I kept the sword. I must have lost it when I fell though."_

_"But… why didn't you have your own?"_

_Kael sighs. "I gave it to Gabriel." When Lucifer looks confused, she elaborates. "When he left."_

_"Gabriel spoke to you when he left? Why?" His angered expression exudes the unasked question in his mind: Why didn't he come to his closest brother instead?_

_"He knew I could help him get away without anyone noticing for some time. He was too young for his own sword – I wasn't going to send him out unarmed," Kael shrugs. "Luci, you saw what the fighting was doing to him – and that was before the war even started. He couldn't turn to you or Michael – both of you would make him stay and choose a side. It was making him insane; he loves you both too much."_

_Lucifer softens. "Then I suppose I should thank you for ensuring his safety. He _is _safe?"_

_"As far as I know."_

_Lucifer nods, and turns back to the matter at hand. "I can use my own sword – but it's more powerful. It could kill you."_

_"Lucifer, don't do this, don't make me into one of _them,_" she spits the last word with vehemence, but he shakes his head._

_"I don't have any other choice."_

_"You could let me die."_

_Lucifer looks affronted. "I could not," he says softly. "With your grace so weak, you will not be born for a millennium. But I will find you again, I promise."_

_Kael fixes him with a hard stare. "You would turn me into an animal? Lucifer, if you do this, I will never forgive you. I can assure you that will still be the truth after an age."_

_His voice is barely audible as he whispers, "I would rather you alive and hateful than dead." He poises his sword over his own chest._

_Kael starts at the sight, flinching with the pain of the movement. "Luci, what are you doing?"_

_"I promise I will find you," he says solemnly. His eyes never leave hers as the point of his sword sinks into his own grace. He cries out with the pain of it_

_It all happens too fast – Kael doesn't have time to protest before he carves out a slither of his grace and cuts out her own. He fixes his grace to her body – now rapidly deteriorating into a soul without her own grace keeping her angelic._

_Lucifer's voice saying "I'll wait," is the last thing she hears before consciousness leaves her._


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Warnings for smut. Ahem. Yeah.**

* * *

Kael comes back to the present with new eyes; human memories mixing with angel.

Lucifer doesn't take his eyes off hers as he digs into the front pocket of his jeans and holds something out to her.

In a tiny vial, buzzing and glowing bright blue in reaction to being so close to its owner, is her grace.

Kael doesn't take it straight away. Instead she says, her voice a little broken, "You killed Gabriel?"

Lucifer nods, his mouth a thin line. Of course she knew already, but it's different when she can remember their friendship. He was a good kid. She and Luci had practically raised him.

She tries her best to shake away her grief. "Why didn't you just tell me who I was at the start?"

Lucifer shakes his head a little; looks at the floor. "I was… You said you wouldn't forgive me." His voice is barely audible over the roar of holy fire.

Kael reaches out to him, fingertips tilting his face to look at her once more. "Luci, you are so _stupid _sometimes, you know that?" she breathes, and before he can retort, her lips are on his.

It only takes him a second to recover, one arm tightening around her waist and the other reaching to wind his fingers into her hair. The kiss is long and slow and she can feel him smiling into it.

The break apart, Kael a little breathless, and she takes her grace from his hand. "It's restored?" she asks, a little in awe as she studies it.

He nods. "It grew stronger with time. Being near you helped."

Kael opens the vial and her grace flows straight into her without hesitation. It wraps around her and melds to her soul and her vision turns white.

She feels whole.

When she sees again, she sobs a little with horror as she takes in the state of Lucifer's grace. Once a gorgeous icy blue, brighter than any angels'; now an ugly dark red. The way it seeps around his form looks like he's bleeding, the source a jagged wound where the angelic equivalent of a heart should be – a crudely cut hole where his healing grace is missing.

"Doesn't that _hurt_?" Kael whispers, wide-eyed, not attempting to hide the shock in her voice.

He shrugs and smiles sadly. "Not when I'm with you."

She touches him them; wraps her fingers around his wrist and connects their grace the way they used to when she was human, except now she can see it. A streak of red emerges from the blue of her grace and flows into him, settling in the hole in his chest. Lucifer sighs in relief.

For a moment his grace seems healed, taking on its old frosty color, but when she removes her hand the grace jumps back into her and leaves him torn once more. She winces. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I knew it would be permanent." Kael nods, trying to push away guilt.

"Call off your demons, we're getting outta here."

Lucifer frowns. "This building is disused. There's no water supply."

"Yeah, well, you learn some science crap when you're human. Look." Kael splinters a crack across the ceiling above them. She twists the crack until it forms a broken square which promptly falls down on to a patch of holy fire, extinguishing it and giving them an exit. Plaster rains down around them.

Kael laughs at Lucifer's confused expression. "You can't have forgotten that a lack of oxygen puts out fire too?"

"Hmm. Must have slipped my mind."

Stepping nimbly out of the fire, Kael extends a hand to Luci. "Get the demons," she repeats. "We're leaving."

* * *

Kael had forgotten what flying was like.

Sure, she remembers being human and the disorientating experience of disappearing in one place and rematerializing in another, but when you're an angel, it's different.

You _soar_.

Kael's wings, now restored to their former glory, are spread out behind her as she dips and spins through time and space itself. Colors rush past her and there's a roar in her ears and it's _wonderful_.

She's powerful and strong and she hadn't realized how much she _missed this_.

Lucifer gets to the cabin first, but when he smirks at her and says "I won," she's so giddy with exhilaration and grace and _Lucifer_ that she leaps for him, legs tangling around his waist and arms tightening around his neck.

"Easy," Lucifer chuckles, a little surprised, but she cuts him off with a short kiss. She presses her forehead to his and he wraps his arms around her as he lets out a quiet, "I missed you." Kael begins to murmur in agreement but he catches her lips with his own and they begin to move together slowly. It's strange, she thinks, that she knows from her time as human that Lucifer is cold to the touch, and yet as an angel she can't tell the difference between his body temperature and hers.

Then one of his hands is in her hair and the other fisting her shirt as the kiss turns open-mouthed and hungry. Heat builds and Kael tightens her legs around his waist as he slips his tongue between her lips. She moans a little when his hands slide down her back to firmly grasp her ass. She moves her hands down his back where she can pull up the hem of his shirt until most of his upper body is exposed, his arms preventing her from tugging the fabric off completely.

Lucifer breaks the kiss. "I haven't… did this. With a vessel." He clears his throat in a way that's oddly human.

Kael roams her hands over the planes of his chest, looking at him teasingly. "Are you trying to tell me you're a virgin, Luci?"

He raises an eyebrow. "You know I'm not." He lifts his arms so she can remove his shirt and undershirt, angelic strength keeping her small frame in position around his waist. His hands come down to grip her thighs this time.

Kael smiles as she peppers kisses along his neck, his shoulder, his chest. She breaks away long enough to say, "You could've fooled me. Don't worry, it's not hard," and brushes her fingers over a nipple. He lets out a soft moan.

She hears him say, a little disgruntledly, "But I am," and she laughs against his skin and lets him walk them over to the bed, his hands slipping under the back of her shirt as he does so. Feeling impatient, Kael tugs her own shirt over her head as he sits on the edge. Heat spikes in her stomach; now she's in his lap, she can tell Lucifer wasn't lying. She grinds against him a little and his eyes darken with lust as he swoops forward for another kiss.

Kael's so caught up in it all, the heat and the kissing and the muffled moans as their tongues slide together and her hands roam all over Lucifer, wanting to feel every inch of him, that she doesn't notice his fumbling. He pulls away with a questioning look as he slips his fingers under the clasp of her bra. "What in the hell is this?"

Kael chuckles as she reaches round to unclasp it. "It's a bra, Luci." She pulls it off and lets it fall unceremoniously to the floor.

His hands cup her breasts, fingers ghosting over nipples. He smirks when her breath catches. "Seems rather pointless. And annoying."

"Yeah, well," Kael huffs as she presses open-mouthed kisses along his jawline, "be glad you didn't get a female vessel."

"Oh, I don't know, you might be about to discover the advantages." He smirks, still teasing her breasts, until she drags her teeth lightly across his earlobe. "_Kael." _His erection strains through his jeans, becoming entirely obvious.

She grins. "You're right, we're entirely too clothed for this." In a blink, their remaining clothes are piled on the floor and Kael wraps her legs tighter around him, reveling in the feeling of skin against skin. Lucifer leans forward to kiss her neck, one hand still busy with her nipple, the other gripping her ass, and Kael moans and arches into it, her entire being set alight with need.

Bringing a hand up to her face, she licks a wide strip down her palm and reaches down to where Lucifer's cock is pressed between their bodies. Her fingers wrap around the base and she gives a single stroke. Lucifer bites down on her neck and groans into her flesh in a way that gives her shivers, and she starts to pump him slowly, twisting her hand a little when she gets to the head.

Then Lucifer's lips are on hers and she bites on his lip as he groans into her mouth, and his fingers are dancing along her inner thigh, teasing her. She speeds up the pace and he seems to sense the urgency because his fingers are slipping between slick folds and curling into her entrance while his thumb successfully locates and circles her clit. Kael moans with abandon, breaking the kiss. "Fuck, Luci," she says against his lips. "Where did you even learn to do that?"

Lucifer's wearing a sly smile when he answers. "I watch a lot of movies when I'm not planning the end of the world."

Kael is going to tease and ask, _Oh yeah, what kind, _but she's saved the trouble when his fingers inside her find _that spot _and she becomes a writhing, babbling mess in his lap. She strokes him faster and faster, smearing precome along his length, until they're both moaning and cursing and grinding against each other.

The need becomes too much too soon and Lucifer reluctantly removes his fingers from her and sucks them dry slowly. Kael gapes at him, because she's not entirely sure he knows how _pornographic _he's being, until he looks up at her and winks in a way that is so entirely _Lucifer _that she has to pull his stupid fingers out his mouth and kiss him until he's breathless.

She positions herself over him and sinks down slowly, letting him fill her, and they both hiss a little at the sensation. Then his hands are on her hips and they're both trying to thrust against each other at once, both trying to get more. Kael bites, sucks and kisses every inch of Lucifer she can reach and he moans into her hair as he reaches down to press a finger against her clit once more.

She moans deeply against his nipple as she's teasing it with her teeth and then her climax is ripping through her; stars bursting behind her eyelids. She clenches around him and she feels him release inside her as he cries out, pressing his forehead to her shoulder.

They come down together and he cups her face and kisses her softly and runs his thumb along her bottom lip and she smiles, because she's an angel again and she has Lucifer and she doesn't have to deal with any of Heaven's bullshit and she's just so _content_.

She cleans them up – angelic powers coming in handy – and Kael sees her sword lying on the nightstand. "I almost forgot," she grins, picking it up. The blue ring around the pommel glows brightly at her touch, illuminating the room, and she smiles fondly at it. "Yeah, I missed you too."

For once Lucifer doesn't have anywhere to be, so they're free and content to spend the night with each other, even if they don't need to sleep. They position themselves in bed; Lucifer on his back, Kael curled up against his chest. She smiles against him. "I'm pretty sure taking your virginity is some kind of sin."

Lucifer huffs a laugh. "It was worth it, at any rate." Kael smiles and slips her fingers between his, hands clasped over his chest.

"Why did you keep the wedding ring?" Kayla asks curiously. Angels don't normally keep possessions belonging to their vessels, save for their clothes.

"I didn't really think about it. I had a lot of respect for my vessel, I wasn't going to start throwing away things that were valuable to him when he was still, you know –" he gestures to his head "– inside."

"But he died."

"Yes." Lucifer stills for a moment. "I suppose it reminded me of you."

* * *

The next morning, Lucifer flies off without any warning, and reappears seconds later. "Michael has taken a vessel," he says grimly.

Kael's heart twists a little inside her. "Dean?"

"No. Another brother. He's bending the rules, but technically it still works."

"Luci –" Kael hesitates. "You – you don't _have _to do this."

Lucifer frowns at her, like she's said something entirely foreign. She tries again. "This – vengeance, it's been your goal for so long, in Hell too, but now you're out and we're here, and we could just _stay_, live ourselves, go wherever we want, you don't need to make this your sole reason to live, I just – you don't have to do this," she finishes lamely.

"I do."

"You'll die."

"Very likely."

Kael inhales sharply. "Then I'm coming with you."

* * *

It's Stull Cemetery, and it's noon.

Lucifer and Kael stand together when Michael appears. "Brother," he says, nodding in Luci's direction. His eyes flick to Kael. "I see you brought your whore."

Kael moves as if to step forward, but Lucifer raises his hand and she stops. "We were kin once, Michael," she says sadly. "You loved me the way you love Luci."

He glares at her. "That was before you twisted him with your blasphemous thoughts. Look at his grace! It's ugly, deformed, because of you." Lucifer looks down, ashamed, and Kael hates that he still cares what his big brother thinks after all this time. "You betrayed us all."

"Our Father betrayed us all, and those who stood with him became traitors to the rest of us," she retorts defiantly.

Lucifer raises his arms. "Enough," he says calmly. "Michael, this is ridiculous. Stand down and we can all go home. This battle doesn't need to be fought." Curious, Kael thinks, that he was so against the idea yesterday, and then the realization hits her – of course, Lucifer wants his brother back. Either he gets him or he dies. She tries very hard not to think about either option. "Why should we let our Father make us fight like dogs in a pit? For what? His own amusement?"

Michael remains unmoved. "Lucifer, you're a monster, and I have to kill you. I follow my orders."

Lucifer looks so plainly _sad_ that it takes everything Kael has not to launch herself at Michael in his defense. She feels a spark of pride when she hears Lucifer's next words. "If that's the way it's gotta be, then I'd like to see you try."

All three of them tense, prepared for the inevitable battle.

A distant roar of an engine makes them stop, and turn towards the sound.

Kael frowns when she hears the opening bars of Def Leppard's _Rock of Ages._

A black '67 Chevy Impala rolls to a stop in the battleground.

Sam and Dean Winchester step out of the car.

Fate can't be changed, after all.

* * *

**A/N: Aaaaand we're done! I'm sorry about the bad smut, I'm not very well practiced in writing straight couples...**

**I hope you enjoyed, anyway! Thanks everyone (again) for reviews and favorites/follows and such, I love all of you, *throws cookies***

**Fun Fact: According to . #fa (and a few other sources) Kael is the name of an angel who fell with Lucifer, which worked really well since I'd already picked out Kayla as my OC's human name before I realized her angel name would have to be different. Coincidence?**


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